Cult leader Wayne Bent said he is the Messiah in a new video that has been released in which he likened himself to Jesus.
Bent, 82, is the leader of the Lord Our Righteousness Church, which the British tabloid The Sun said is “rumored to be a suicide cult.”
Bent was sentenced to 10 years in prison after his 2008 conviction on one count of second-degree criminal sexual contact with a minor and two counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, according to the Albuquerque Journal.
At the time of his 2016 release, he issued a statement dubbed his “last will and testament.”
“Because I didn’t worship what the world and its nominal Christian churches worship, and furthermore, because I could not be made to, this offended ‘the beast,’ the self-proclaimed ruler of this world and self-proclaimed educator of our children, and caused it to target me as not being part of it,” the statement said.
During the YouTube video titled “Messiah’s Last Words,” Bent likened his persecution to that of Jesus.
“I was put in prison and charged with crimes that I didn’t commit,” he said.
During the video he said he was not guilty of the crime for which he was convicted, blaming “innuendo, fake news, the mob.”
He later said that everyone involved in his trial lied.
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“I was put in prison for seven years and 42 days … and it fulfilled prophecy,” he said,
“Before that time, while I was sitting in my house, here in this land, God told me I was Messiah,” he said.
“Just as Jesus was crucified for his testimony, I was crucified for mine,” he said.
He said that just as Jerusalem was destroyed after Jesus was put to death, so the United States is being punished for what it did to him.
“The government is destroyed, no president will ever be accepted, the presidency is destroyed, the congress is destroyed, Washington, D.C., is destroyed all because they destroyed me and my children and my city,” he said.
The father of the two girls Bent was accused of touching during his trial said Bent deserves what he got. The Sun did not use the man’s name.
“He created his own circumstances to get him where he was and that’s what he always preached to us, that if you break the law you’re going to go to jail and you need to accept your punishment. But he was complaining about it from day one, saying: ‘People are persecuting me,” the father of the two girls said.
WAYNE BENT – A FALSE MESSIAH pic.twitter.com/4UpgUY4FKJ
— FaithSharks (@FaithSharks) May 26, 2016
“Dude — you created it. You set your own circumstances and then you complain about it. He’s not practicing what he taught us, he taught us to be responsible and if God puts you in jail he puts you in jail for a reason,” he said.
The cult Bent founded lives in isolation in the New Mexico desert. “The cult has been dogged with rumors Bent is set to lead followers to suicide although he has claimed in the past they are not a suicide cult,” according to the Sun.
